TRUTH BE TOLD

Thursday, December 6, 2012

Only 16 Members Can Unseat Boehner, Group Says

Only 16 Members Can Unseat Boehner, Group Says

The president and CEO of conservative group American Majority Action
(AMA) is demanding Republicans band together to fire House Speaker John
Boehner.

“Speaker Boehner has been an abysmal failure as speaker, and his
latest purge is the nail in the coffin for conservatives,” AMA’s Ned
Ryun said in a statement. “Boehner has never won a negation battle with
the White House or Senate—and he’s been nothing short of an embarrassing
spokesman for the Conservative Movement. It’s time for him to go.”
Ryun pointed out, too, that if conservatives want to unseat Boehner,
they’d only need 16 members to abstain from supporting him in January.
That’s because Boehner needs 218 votes to become Speaker again. Seeing
as there are 233 House Republicans next Congress, and assuming no
Democrats would vote for Boehner as Speaker, if 16 conservative
Republicans abstain from voting, Boehner wouldn’t regain the
Speakership.
“The Conservative Movement doesn’t realize we only need 16 House
votes to block Boehner from becoming Speaker,” Ryun said. “House rules
demand nominees for speaker to receive a majority—at least 218 votes—to
win election. If 16 members abstain, Boehner only has 217 votes.”
The Republican caucus already locked the votes for leadership slots
up in conference shortly after the election, but it has to be made
official at the beginning of the next Congress in January. That means
conservatives upset with Boehner’s leadership technically could band
together to ouster him.
After this week’s Boehner purge of conservatives from influential
committee roles, enough Republicans might be perturbed enough to do
something about it – especially with
Boehner threatening retaliation against more than just the four
conservatives he’s already yanked from their committee spots if anyone else doesn’t toe the leadership line.

House Speaker John Boehner on Wednesday warned his House Republican
conference against dissent from GOP leadership – and threatened
retaliation similar to that against the already-purged conservatives if
anyone else breaks from his pack.

The Hill reports that,
according to Kansas Republican Rep. Tim Huelskamp, Boehner used his
weekly GOP conference meeting to “note that we [leadership] have
punished four members, he claimed that it had nothing to do with their
conservative ideology, but had to do with their voting patterns."
Huelskamp also said Boehner threatened “there may be more folks that
will be targeted” and that Boehner told the caucus that “‘we're watching
all your votes.’”
It’s unclear what criteria Boehner and GOP leadership plan to use in
the weeks and months ahead. Boehner spokesman Michael Steel wouldn’t
provide specifics on what criteria or votes on which the Speaker is
“watching” conservative Republicans. Instead, when asked, Steel provided
Breitbart News with the exact quote another Boehner spokesman gave two
nights ago for a response to a completely different question. “The
Steering Committee makes decisions based on a range of factors,” Steel
said.
Huelskamp is one of the four conservatives purged from committee
assignments from which he would be able to affect fiscal policy. He was
pulled from the House Budget Committee and House Agriculture Committee.
Michigan Republican Rep. Justin Amash was pulled from the Budget
Committee too, and Reps. David Schweikert of Arizona and Walter Jones of
North Carolina were removed from the House Financial Services
Committee.
Huelskamp also addressed the GOP caucus on Wednesday and said he
received “warm reception from some and silence from others.” He asked
GOP leadership to publicly provide "that list of votes used in the
Steering Committee to reward or punish members."
As first reported by Breitbart News, GOP leadership – Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and Whip Kevin McCarthy – used a secret criteria list
to decide which members to cut. Officials in each of their offices
refuse to discuss the details of the list on the record with press and
they refuse to publish it, so it’s unclear what criteria they used. It’s
also unclear which figures in leadership sparked this process and what
specific roles each official involved played.
At first, GOP leadership tried to pin at least part of the blame on
the chairmen of the respective committees from which they pulled each
member – Budget Committee chairman Rep. Paul Ryan and incoming Financial
Services Committee chairman Rep. Jeb Hensarling. While a spokesman for
Ryan hasn’t returned multiple requests for comment on the purge, a
spokeswoman for Hensarling on Wednesday told Breitbart News that her boss had nothing to do with the purge.
The story from House GOP leadership keeps changing. On Wednesday afternoon, BuzzFeed reported
– citing anonymous leadership aides – that there were different loyalty
issues with each of the members. That’s a sharp departure from what
Boehner had just told his caucus in its weekly meeting and what GOP
leadership aides have told press at the beginning of this controversy.
“Huelskamp and Amash have repeatedly been thorns in the side of
leadership, and in some cases their colleagues — in fact, one aide
pointed out that Huelskamp voted against Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget,”
BuzzFeed wrote. “And Schweikert engendered significant anger amongst
elements of leadership during his reelection bid against fellow
Republican Ben Quayle. He is also widely considered by leadership to be
the source of an embarrassing story this summer about Republican
members’ drunken swimming session in the Sea of Galilee.”
“Schweikert, notably, was also ousted from Majority Whip Kevin
McCarthy’s Whip Team last year because of concerns with his loyalty,”
BuzzFeed added. “The Whip team is a key organ of leadership, designed to
help round up support amongst Republicans for bills coming to the
floor. A Republican aide also pointed to the fact that Rep. Walter
Jones, a North Carolina Republican who has consistently broken with
leadership over the war, was replaced on the Financial Services
Committee by Rep. Mick Mulvaney, a protégé of Sen. Jim DeMint and one of
the most conservative members of the House.”
What those leadership aides told BuzzFeed after widespread
conservative backlash directly contradicts what leadership aides told
Roll Call about the purge before they faced any criticism. “You want
good things in Congress and to have a good career? Better play along
nicely,” a leadership aide told Roll Call.

House GOP Leaders Purged Conservatives Using Secret Criteria List

House Republican leaders used a secret criteria list to decide which
conservatives to purge from powerful House committees, Breitbart News
has learned. As this time, it appears they will keep the criteria list
hidden from the public, too. Spokespeople for members of House GOP
leadership have refused to discuss details about the list on the record
with press.

Because GOP Leadership won't discuss the list, it’s unclear what
specific criteria the list contained and how much of a role it played in
the conservative purge. It’s also unclear which member of House
Republican leadership initiated this process.
In remarks to the Heritage Foundation’s Bloggers Briefing on Tuesday, Kansas Republican Rep. Tim Huelskamp confirmed the existence of such a list.
“We’ve heard from multiple sources that someone walked in with a list
of votes and said if you didn’t reach a particular scorecard of what
was considered the right vote – which by the way, in most cases, was not
the conservative position – then [they said] ‘we’re going to have to
remove you from the committee,’” Huelskamp said.
“All that took place behind closed doors, which is again a problem
with Washington, D.C. – whether it’s the budget negotiations, whether
it’s everything else, it’s usually done behind closed doors," he
explained. "I think, as conservatives, this is where we can win: We’ve
got to be willing and able to talk about things in public instead of
being afraid of actual public scrutiny.”
Huelskamp later told Breitbart News he thinks House Speaker John
Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and Whip Kevin McCarthy owe it to
the American people to be transparent about this decision making process
– and that they should publicly release the list.
“In the name of transparency and openness, they most certainly should
release the criteria,” Huelskamp said in an email. “Republican
leadership promised America a new era of transparency – they should
deliver on it.”
Huelskamp was one of four conservative Republicans that GOP leadership removed
from committees on which they’d have the ability to affect fiscal
policy. He and Michigan Republican Rep. Justin Amash were pulled from
the House Budget Committee and Reps. David Schweikert of Arizona and
Walter Jones of North Carolina got yanked off the House Financial
Services Committee.
Amash, who joined Huelskamp at the Heritage Foundation event on
Tuesday, said nobody in leadership even informed him of the move. “We
haven’t even been told officially that I’ve been removed from the Budget
Committee,” Amash said. “I’ve had to read it in the newspapers. So,
actually, I’ve received not a single call from anyone in leadership. Not
a single email. I’ve received no messages about it. I’ve been not told
about what committees I will be on, if in fact I have been removed from
Budget – which I have to assume is true.”
Amash added that, like Republican Study Committee chairman Rep. Jim Jordan, he thinks this type of behavior from GOP leadership is dangerous for the party.
“For a party that’s trying to expand its base and make sure that it
reaches out to young people and new groups, I think it’s pretty
outrageous frankly,” Amash said. “It’s pretty clear I come from a more
libertarian wing of the party – this is the growing portion of the
Republican Party. And, really, it’s a slap in the face of all young
people who are out there thinking about being Republicans, want to be
part of this party and are being told ‘well, if you disagree with
leadership just a couple times, we’re going to send you home and we’re
going to tell you you’re off the committee and you don’t get to
participate.’”
Amash said, too, that he voted with Budget Committee Republicans “95
percent of the time” over the past two years. “On the 5 percent of
disagreements, those were on some big issues at times and I think that
we didn’t take a strong enough approach in dealing with our debt – which
is why we’re all here,” he said. “It’s not acceptable to have budgets
that are unbalanced until the year 2040.”